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By
Brooke Comer
A number of war-themed
reality shows have become enormous hits in Iraq since the collapse
of Saddam Hussein's regime and the subsequent proliferation
of satellite channels throughout the country. State-run Al Iraqiya
has a hit on its hands with the controversial Terror in
the Hands of Justice in which captive insurgents confess
to terrorist acts against innocent civilians. Sunni-owned Al
Sharqiya’s Labor and Materials is a radical version
of Extreme Home Makeover, in which families who lost
homes and furniture to bombs receive lavish replacement gifts,
often replicating the living room that was blown to smithereens
right down to the crystal ashtrays. And Saya Wa Sormaya
invites impoverished Iraqis to vie for funds to start a
business. Even the popular soap opera Color of Ash
is moving, albeit inadvertently, towards realism, as a location
leveled by last night’s bomb may necessitate writing an
explosion into today’s script. Escapist it isn’t.
So why do Iraqis, who live the horror of war every day, want
to watch the war on TV?
Rasha Said Redha, an Iraqi wife and mother from Hurriya, a working
class neighborhood, epitomizes the country’s TV-viewing
public. She cried when Shaima Ebad Zubeir, the hostess of Labor
and Materials, presented Umm Hussein, a widow who lost
her home, with a new house. “I like the program so much
because it expresses the suffering of Iraqis without making
it pretty,” she explains. “It shows the reality.”(1)
The reality is certainly grim, yet both Labor and Materials
and Terror in the Hands of Justice purportedly
have more viewers than the strictly-entertainment variety show
Iraq Star, Baghdad’s answer to American Idol.
The stars and crews of war-themed reality shows take great risks
to deliver their product. Zubeir is in mortal danger as a result
of her rise to fame. The hostess is a face everyone knows, and
these days, fame in Baghdad could be fatal. When she roams the
rubble to decide which of the many contestant-victims deserve
a new dinette set or a roof, Zubeir is followed by bodyguards
hired by the station. For their own protection, the Labor
and Materials crew all wear Al Sharqiya baseball caps after
a cameraman was attacked by Mahdi Army militants who stole his
camera, thinking that he was a foreign journalist.
Zubeir’s success may be measured by her ability to transform
of burned-out rooms and shattered windows. In the role model
she presents, Zubeir’s viewers see a determination to
repair the war’s damage and carry on. Zubeir also is an
example of a liberated woman—intelligent, powerful, and
able to make a positive change in the lives of war victims.
Most importantly, Zubeir is a survivor. “We all have pain
that we are dealing with,” she notes. “Every day
you delete a number from your mobile phone. We lose people in
assassinations, booby traps, explosions. So we eat and drink
with death, but we go out to work.”(2)
Another Sharqiya program, Saya Wa Sormaya, explores
a topic familiar to most Iraqis: how to survive in the unstable
economy brought about by war. The show introduces candidates
who want to go into business but can’t afford the startup
costs. If they are well-prepared and show potential, they may
win the first round. If so, the show gives the candidates enough
money to start a small business. In round two, the show revisits
the winners to decide whether they deserve to be encouraged
with more funds. In a recent episode, 20-year-old Hassan Ali
Taber wanted to open a supermarket in his home. The selection
committee grilled him on his marital status, professional goals,
what he would sell, what kind of competition existed in the
area, and how he would deal with challenges in his new business.
Taber’s answers impressed the committee enough to get
a loan, but when they visited him again a few weeks later, he’d
moved the industrial refrigerators into his living room. They
decided he hadn’t been industrious enough to warrant continued
funds. Another contestant, Fatheya Mohamed, a widow and mother
of four, wanted to start a taxi service, but her murky history
as a driver, her lack of enthusiasm for auto mechanics, and
her gender, jinxed this plan. The show’s producers prefer
to avoid downbeat endings; though, and so the selection committee
suggested that she create a new business proposal for a bakery
or fruit shop.
The most controversial reality show, Al Iraqiya’s Terror
in the Hands of Justice does double duty as sensationalist
entertainment and anti-insurgent propaganda. The real life confession-drama
hopes to convince viewers that insurgents are essentially hired
guns, not patriots. Footage for the show is provided by the
Interior Ministry and then edited by Al Iraqiyah, which staunchly
defends the veracity of the confessors. “Before, the Iraqi
people saw the insurgency as a kind of noble resistance,”
says an Iraqi viewer who gave his name only as Abduraman. “But
when the show aired and people saw how these ‘insurgents’
talk and heard the details of their crimes, there are horrified.
None of these people are fighting Americans. They are killing
other Iraqis; members of the National Guard and the police.
The only victims are Iraqis. This is not resistance.”(3)
Confessions come from so-called resistance fighters like Talal
R’ad Ismail al Abassi, former Imam of a mosque fired,
according to his Terror interrogator, for admitting
to having sex with men inside the mosque. Abassi explained to
the audience that killing is a lucrative business and emphasized
that his motive was cash and not loyalty to Islam or Iraq. Another
suspect, bruised and battered Qahtan Khalid, informed viewers
that he’d killed ten policemen to avoid being slaughtered
himself.
By telling the stories
of individual hit men, Terror hopes to undermine the
insurgency by characterizing it as a as a chaotic band of opportunists
and terrified draftees. Mishan Jabouri, a Sunni politician in
the national assembly, however, believes the confessions are
fabricated to sway public opinion. His brother appeared on the
show and confessed to killing four men, “but all these
deceased are still alive,” says Jabouri. “I don’t
know the reason that led my brother to make such untrue claims.”(4)
The reason may be linked to the confessors’ treatment
in custody and the possibility of their being tortured. Shortly
after Khalid’s episode aired, his corpse was sent to his
father. The Iraqi Human Rights Ministry has since opened an
investigation into his death.
In times of disaster, fear and mourning become chronic conditions.
In Iraq, people’s perspectives are so informed by the
horror of war, that it seems nothing less dramatic than the
horror of war can be guaranteed to draw viewers. “For
the rest of the world, reality TV is a form of entertainment,”
says Labor and Materials director Ali Haroon, adding
that in Iraq, a shattered country, reality TV “expresses
a kind of burning pain. We deal with broken cities and destitute
people. So this is reality TV with a flavor of Iraqi pain."(5)
With reporting
by Usama Najeeb, TBS associate editor.
Brooke
Comer is a freelance correspondent and short story
writer whose work has appeared in the Massachusetts Literary
Review, Davos Global Report, New York Times, Los Angeles Times,
Egypt Today, Hollywood Reporter, Book Forum, Good Housekeeping,
National Public Radio, Glamour, and other publications.
She divides her time between Cairo and Santa Barbara.
NOTES
1. Annia Ciezadlo,
“Reality TV Hits Home in Baghdad” The Christian
Science Monitor, 27 July 2004.
(www.csmonitor.com/2004/0727/p01s04-woiq.html)
2. Alex Thomson,
“The New Face of Iraqi TV,” The Guardian,
12 January, 2006.
3. Thanassis
Cambanis, “Confessions Rivet Iraqis," The Boston
Globe, 18 March 2005. (www.boston/com/news/world/middleeast/articles)
4. Ibid.
5. Thomson, “The New Face of Iraqi TV”
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